Meet the 5 stars of Apple's class of 2026: From Apple iPhone Duo and iPhone 18 Pro to AirPods 5

Apple’s class of 2026/2027 is here. We got to meet the iPhone 18 Pro family, the Apple Watch Series 12. And, the real jaw-dropper, Apple’s first ever foldable phone. It’s called the iPhone Duo.

Revel in the tech shininess while you can as there’s a good chance you can’t afford an iPhone Duo. Soz.

There’s no relatively affordable new iPhone this time either, as Apple skipped the iPhone 18 for now — it’s Pro or nowt. Tech glitterati only.

Other fresh announcements include the Apple Watch Ultra 4 and a new pair of earphones, the AirPods 5. Let’s take a quick closer look at each, with their prices and a run-down of exactly what’s new.

Let’s start with the biggie, the iPhone Duo.

iPhone Duo: The first Apple foldable

• Starting price: £1999
• When: pre-order 16th October, release 23rd October

This is Apple’s first folable phone. And while plenty of Android bores won’t be able to stop themselves reminding you Samsung and co have been doing this since 2019, it’s still a big deal. We get an outer screen and a more tablet-like inner screen, revealed when you open up this book-like gadget. Some of the neatest parts include that both screens have the same aspect ratio, for that famous Apple consistency, and that there’s a hidden under-screen camera in the fold-open display.

It has a titanium casing structure, a 7.6-inch inner display and a 5.4-inch outer one. A 48MP main camera similar to the iPhone 18 crew, but it lacks a zoom cam and variable aperture. We’re most intrigued to see how the iPhone Duo is to use: does it feel like having an iPhone and an iPad in your pocket, or it this going to be something else entirely?

iPhone 18 Pro and Max: Adjustable camera

• Starting price: £1199, £1299 (Pro Max)
• When: Pre-order from 12th September

It’s flagship iPhones only for Apple’s 2026 September launch. You can have the 6.3-inch iPhone 18 Pro or the 6.9-inch iPhone 18 Pro Max. And aside from quite different battery life and levels of pocket-bothering, you get similar tech.

The big one on the camera side is variable aperture. This means the hole that lets light into the camera, to reach the sensor, can be made smaller. It’s entirely normal in dedicated cameras, but only a few phones — ever — have had this feature. And they’re from all over the place in time, like the Nokia N86 from 2009 and Samsung Galaxy S9 of 2018.

In theory they let you choose how blurry the background is in photos, but in practice this is only going to work well on an iPhone in bright conditions as you’re also lowering the amount of light that gets in. Phone cameras still have pretty small sensors and lens apertures compared with the “proper” cameras they’ve done their best to replace.

Never has variable aperture in a phone felt all that impactful to me. Colour us intrigued, mind: maybe Apple can pull this one off.

Other than that, we get an Apple A20 Pro processor that Apple says is way more powerful and efficient — which we don’t doubt. It says the iPhone 18 Pro will last 24 hours, the iPhone 18 Pro Max 30 hours. Charging speeds are way better too, reaching 50% in as little as 15 minutes.

Apple Watch Series 12: Healthy Upgrade

• Staring price: £369
• When: From 18th September

Apple has made some pretty neat changes to the Apple Watch Series 12 that are less subtle than they may sound. The frequency of its heart rate readings is going up dramatically — you may have thought your older model was giving you all-day data but it was actually just many snapshots separated by minutes. That changes with Series 12.

It means the Apple Watch Series 12 will be able to much better judge things like fatigue and bodily stress, using a metric called HRV, heart rate variability. This is going to feed into a new stat called Readiness — which wearable bands like Whoop have turned into a whole mini industry.

The Apple Watch Series 12 also gets a new S11 processor with much better AI capabilities, letting it run some AI features right from your wrist, like transcription of meetings. Apple’s Ceramic finish option also returns after years out in the cold. Neat.

Apple Watch Ultra 4: More Battery

• Starting price: £749
• When: From 18th September

The Apple Watch Ultra 4 gets all the health-sensing benefits of the Series 12, of course. Plus better battery life than the last generation. It’s rated for 50 hours of use, versus 42 hours in the third Watch Ultra.

Not masses to say about this one, then, but it is inching towards fixing the oldest Apple Watch issue — the constant charging.

Apple AirPods 5: Big on Peace

• Starting price: £119
• When: From 18th September

OK, we’ll level with you. The AirPods Pro series is much better than the standard AirPods if you care about sound quality or have a social conscience, as they leak much less sound. But from a sheer engineering perspective, we’re giving Apple major props for the AIrPods 5.

They apparently provide 1.5x better active noise cancellation than the last generation, as well as better sound thanks to a redesigned architecture. Earphones like these are creatures of compromise when used out in the real world — but Apple’s engineers get maximum points for catering for all those who can’t stand the more invasive feel of the AirPods Pro. It’s the Lord’s work.